The Isle of Unrest Part 25

It was getting late in the afternoon when they met a man in a dog-cart driving at a great pace. He pulled up when he saw them. His face was the colour of lead, his eyes were startlingly bloodshot.

"This paris.h.i.+oner has been badly scared," muttered the soldier who was driving Mademoiselle Brun.

"Where are you going?" asked the stranger in a high, thin voice.

"To Sedan."

"Then turn back," he cried; "Sedan is no place for a woman. It is a h.e.l.l on earth. I saw it all, mon Dieu. I saw it all. I was at Bazeilles. I saw the children thrown into the windows of the burning houses. I saw the Bavarians shoot our women in the streets. I saw the troops rush into Sedan like rabbits into their holes, and then the Prussians bombarded the town. They had six hundred guns all round the town, and they fired upon that little place which was packed full like a sheep-pen. It is not war--it is butchery. What is the good G.o.d doing? What is He thinking of?"

And the man, who had the pasty face of a clerk or a commercial traveller, raised his whip to heaven in a gesture of fierce anger. Mademoiselle Brun looked at him with measuring eyes. He was almost a man at that moment.

But perhaps her standard of manhood was too high.

"And is Sedan taken?" she asked quietly.

"Sedan is taken. Macmahon is wounded. The emperor is prisoner, and the whole French army has surrendered. Ninety thousand men. The Prussians had two hundred and forty thousand men. Ah! That emperor--that scoundrel!"

Mademoiselle Brun looked at him coldly, but without surprise. She had dealt with Frenchmen all her life, and probably expected that the fallen should be reviled--an unfortunate characteristic in an otherwise great national spirit.

"And the cavalry?" she asked.

"Ah!" cried the man, and again his dull eye flashed. "The cavalry were splendid. They tried to cut their way out. They pa.s.sed through the Prussian cavalry and actually faced the infantry, but the fire was terrible. No man ever saw or heard anything like it. The cuira.s.siers were mown down like corn. The cavalry exists no longer, madame, but its name is immortal."

There was nothing poetic about Mademoiselle Brun, who listened rather coldly.

"And you," she asked, "what are you? you are a.s.suredly a Frenchman?"

"Yes--I am a Frenchman."

"And yet your back is turned," said Mademoiselle Brun, "towards the Prussians."

"I am a writer," explained the man--"a journalist. It is my duty to go to some safe place and write of all that I have seen."

"Ah!" said Mademoiselle Brun. "Let us, my friend," she said, turning to her companion on the forage-cart, "proceed towards Sedan. We are fortunately not in the position of monsieur."

CHAPTER XIX.

THE SEARCH.

"Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar."

There were many who thought the war was over that rainy morning after the fall of Sedan. For events were made to follow each other quickly by those three sleepless men who moved kings and emperors and armies at their will. Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon must have slept but little--if they closed their eyes at all--between the evening of the first and the morning of the third day of September. For human foresight must have its limits, and the German leaders could hardly have dreamt, in their most optimistic moments, of the triumph that awaited them. Bismarck could hardly have foreseen that he should have to provide for an imperial prisoner. Moltke's marvellous plans of campaign could scarcely have embraced the details necessary to the immediate disposal of ninety thousand prisoners of war, with many guns and horses and much ammunition.

It was but twenty-four hours after he had left Sedan to seek, and seek in vain, the King of Prussia, that the third Napoleon--the modern man of destiny who had climbed so high and fallen so very low--set out on his journey to the Palace of Wilhelmshohe, never to set foot on French soil again. For he was to seek a home, and finally a grave, in England, where his bones will lie till that day when France shall think fit to deposit them by those of the founder of the adventurous dynasty.

Among those who stood in the muddy street of Donchery that morning, and watched in silence the departure of the simple carriage, was Mademoiselle Brun, whose stern eyes rested for a moment on the sphinx-like face, met for an instant the dull and extinct gaze of the man who had twisted all France round his little finger.

When the cavalcade had pa.s.sed by, she turned away and walked towards Sedan. The road was crowded with troops, coming and going almost in silence. Long strings of baggage-carts splashed past. Here and there an ambulance waggon of lighter build was allowed a quicker pa.s.sage.

Messengers rode, or hurried on foot, one way and the other; but few spoke, and a hush seemed to hang over all. There was no cheering this morning--even that was done. The rain splashed pitilessly down on these men who had won a great victory, who now hurried hither and thither, afraid of they knew not what, cowering beneath the silence of Heaven.

Mademoiselle was stopped outside the gates of Sedan.

"You can go no further!" said an under-officer of a Bavarian regiment in pa.s.sable French, the first to question the coming or going of this insignificant and self-possessed woman.

"But I can stay here?" returned mademoiselle in German. In teaching, she had learnt--which is more than many teachers do.

"Yes, you can stay here," laughed the German.

And she stayed there patiently for hours in the rain and mud. It was afternoon before her reward came. No one heeded her, as, standing on an overturned gun-carriage, beneath her shabby umbrella, she watched the first detachment of nearly ten thousand Frenchmen march out of the fortress to their captivity in Germany.

"No cavalry?" she said to a bystander when the last detachment had gone.

"There is no cavalry left, ma bonne dame," replied the old man to whom she had spoken.

"No cavalry left! And Lory de Va.s.selot was a cuira.s.sier. And Denise loved Lory." Mademoiselle Brun knew that, though perhaps Denise herself was scarcely aware of it. In these three thoughts mademoiselle told the whole history of Sedan as it affected her. Solferino had, for her, narrowed down to one man, fat and old at that, riding at the head of his troops on a great horse specially chosen to carry bulk. The victory that was to mar one empire and make another, years after Solferino, was summed up in three thoughts by the woman who had the courage to live frankly in her own small woman's world, who was ready to fight--as resolutely as any fought at Sedan--for Denise. She turned and went down that historic road, showing now, as ever, a steady and courageous face to the world, though all who spoke to her stabbed her with the words, "There is no cavalry left--no cavalry left, ma bonne dame."

She hovered about Donchery and Sedan, and the ruins of Bazeilles, for some days, and made sure that Lory de Va.s.selot had not gone, a prisoner, to Germany. The confusion in the French camp was greater than any had antic.i.p.ated, and no reliable records of any sort were obtainable.

Mademoiselle could not even ascertain whether Lory had fought at Sedan; but she shrewdly guessed that the mad attempt to cut a way through the German lines was such as would recommend itself to his heart. She haunted, therefore, the heights of Bazeilles, seeking among the dead one who wore the cuira.s.sier uniform. She found, G.o.d knows, enough, but not Lory de Va.s.selot.

All this while she never wrote to Frejus, judging, with a deadly common sense, that no news is better than bad news. Day by day she continued her self-imposed task, on the slippery hill-sides and in the muddy valleys, until at last she pa.s.sed for a peasant-woman, so bedraggled was her dress, so lined and weather-beaten her face. Her hair grew white in those days, her face greyer. She had not even enough to eat. She lay down and slept whenever she could find a roof to cover her. And always, night and day, she carried with her the burthen of that bad news of which she would not seek to relieve herself by the usual human method of telling it to another.

And one day she wandered into a church ten miles on the French side of Sedan, intending perhaps to tell her bad news to One who will always listen. But she found that this was no longer a house of prayer, for the dead and dying were lying in rows on the floor. As she entered, a tall man, coming quickly out, almost knocked her down. His arms were full of cooking utensils. He was in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves: blood-stained, smoke-grimed, unshaven and unwashed. He turned to apologize, and began explaining that this was no place for a woman; but he stopped short. It was the millionaire Baron de Melide.

Mademoiselle Brun sat suddenly down on a bench near the door. She did not look at him. Indeed, she purposely looked away and bit her lip with her little fierce teeth because it would quiver. In a moment she had recovered herself.

"I have come to help you," she said.

"G.o.d knows, we want you," replied the baron--a phlegmatic man, who, nevertheless, saw the quivering lip, and turned away hastily. For he knew that mademoiselle would never forgive herself, or him, if she broke down now.

"Here," he said, with a clumsy gaiety, "will you wash these plates and dishes? You will find the pump in the cure's garden. We have nurses and doctors, but we have no one to wash up. And it is I who do it. This is my hospital. I have borrowed the building from the good G.o.d."

Mademoiselle was naturally a secretive woman. She could even be silent about her neighbours' affairs. Susini had been guided by a quick intuition, characteristic of his race, when he had confided in this Frenchwoman. She had been some hours in the baron's hospital before she even mentioned Lory's name.

"And the Count de Va.s.selot?" she inquired, in her usual curt form of interrogation, as they were taking a hurried and unceremonious meal in the vestry by the light of an altar candle.

The baron shook his head and gulped down his food.

"No news?" inquired Mademoiselle Brun.

"None."

They continued to eat for some minutes in silence.

"Was he at Sedan?" asked mademoiselle, at length.